"It makes us all feel better, doesn't it ?" And he gave me a brisk little pat on the shoulder that made me feel quite like a man.
How much better I felt after that talk with the old Squire! I felt as blithe as a bird; and when we got home I ran and frisked and whistled all the way to the pasture, where I went to drive home the Jersey herd.
The only qualm I felt was that I had acted without Addison's consent; but his first words when I had told him relieved me on that score.
"I'm glad of it!" he said.

"We've been in that fox bed long enough.

Now let Willis squirm." And when I told him of the old Squire's arrangement for our paying off the debt, he said, "That suits me.

But we'll make Willis work!" We went over to tell Willis that evening.

He was, I think, even more relieved than we were; in the weeks of anxiety that he had passed he had determined that nothing would ever induce him to use poison again for trapping animals.
At that time many new telegraph lines were being put up in Maine; and the old Squire had recently accepted a contract for three thousand cedar poles, twenty feet long, at the rate of twenty-five cents a pole.